Abandonment
by Freida Right
Summary: FFIV. A rather depressing look at all the times Rydia has been abandoned by someone. Starting with her mother and moving forward through the game. Major spoilers. You've been warned!


Just taking a quick break from everything else to write this. It's feeling like every other Rydia fan has some sort of character study about her, and I've been dying to wtite my own.

Anyways, my fic is called Abandonment, and it's about the times that Rydia was abandoned by someone. Sad, I know, but I felt moved to write it. My fans know how impulsive I can be at times with ideas.

KainxRydia fans, view with discretion. You have been warned.

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"Mama!"

Rydia ran to her mother's limp body as fast as her short legs could take her, filled with terror and panic. Why was she lying on the ground like that? Why was she so still? What was going on?

She skidded to a halt and fell to her knees beside her mother, tears already running down her face. She took one of her mother's limp hands in hers: it was cooling like a dying fire, and the rhythmic thumping of a pulse was slowing. It was coming, but taking it's time; every time it thumped, it took longer for the next one to come.

What if it stopped coming at all?

"Mama..." Rydia said softly through a sob.

Her mother's eyes fluttered oped weakly, revealing faint slits of green the same as Rydia's own eyes.

"They've broken through... The dragon is dead..." she struggled. "They are coming... You have to get out..."

"But you're coming with me, right?" Rydia asked hopefully.

"Rydia... I love you..." Mother's eyes closed and she ceased to move.

thump-thump... thump-thump...thump-thump...

Rydia began to panic again, not knowing quite what this meant. She shook her mother gently, trying to wake her, but nothing happened.

A house nearby burst into flames, with no reason in sight. Another house combusted on it's own, even closer this time. Fire suddenly surrounded her, filling her whole world with bright red and orange flames and a longing for the comfort of her mother.

"Mama!" Rydia wailed, praying that her tears would somehow conjure her mother back to save her.

_Please help me, mama! I'm scared and I don't know what to do! Help me! _She prayed.

And help did come to her. Just not in the form that she expected.

Out of the shadows cast by the flames, two figures came advancing toward her. A shread of hope rose in her heart; maybe her mother had sent help.

Funny looking help though: two men, one the head of a bull and the other with the head of a dragon?

No, no, helmets, she realized. Menacing figures, they were.

_What will happen to me now?_Rydia wondered nervously.

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"Kain?"

Rydia guessed that she was waking up, since she could hear. She opened her eyes ever so slightly to see that her only companion was, joy of all joys, the man with the bull-helmet.

_The man who destroyed my town, _Rydia remembered, feeling the pain of loss stinging her heart once more. She had just lost everything; her mother, her home, her friends. All before noon, and this man was to blame for it.

_I hate him. I hate him so much..._

"Kain, where are you?" the man called again.

"Where could he be?" he wondered out loud. "I hope he's okay."

He turned to look at Rydia, but she shut her eyes again, pretending to be asleep.

"Well, Kain's going to have to wait. Right now I have to take care of you," he said. The next thing that Rydia knew was that the man was carrying her in his arms. But if she had been awake and stronger she'd have wrestled her way out of his grip.

_Now where am I going?_Rydia wondered, drifting back to sleep from anguish and fatigue.

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"Tellah."

"No," protested the sage. "I'm going to find this Golbez person, and I'm gonna kill him! You'll see."

"You can't go alone," Cecil protested.

"Watch me!" Tellah retorted. He walked to the door and stormed out, leaving Rydia alone with Cecil, her protector, and this strange, grieving prince who called himself Edward.

The prince was still crying over the body of his beloved Anna, who was also Tellah's daughter.

Rydia was suddenly quite cross with him for his behavior.

_He's acting like a five year old,_ she thought. _He should be on his feet doing something about it, like any other grown up would!_ She ran over to him and pushed him hard. Considering his frail strength and unstable state, the heavy push knocked him over on his side.

"Stop crying!" Rydia demanded. "You're a grown up! You're _not _supposed to cry!"

Edward looked up into her face with surprise on his tear streaked face. He hadn't expected this kind of action from a seven year old.

But then, Rydia was full of surprises.

"I lost my mama, but I'm not crying," she continued.

"Rydia," Cecil said softly, moved by the deep speech from his young friend.

Edward, however was not so moved.

"I don't care!" he yelled, causing the child to step back in alarm. "Just leave me alone!"

If there was one thing that Cecil would not tolerate at that time, it was someone raising their voice at Rydia for no reason. And besides, Edward was acting like a baby. The dark knight walked over to the prince and kicked him in the shoulder, bringing the prince's attention to his black, bull-horned helmet.

"Hey! Pull yourself together! You're now the rightful ruler of this place, so start acting like it and quit yelling at her!" he demanded.

Edward cowered away from him, clearly frightened to a fuller extent than Cecil had intended.

Cecil calmed himself and said in an amiable voice, "Look: my name is Cecil. I'm a dark knight from Baron, and I need your help to recover the sand ruby to cure a dear friend of mine."

"She has the desert fever," Rydia added.

Edward was silent for a moment, deciding what to do.

"What's her name?" he asked.

"Her name is Rosa," Cecil answered.

"She's very dear to you, isn't she," Edward mused. "Like Anna was to me."

Cecil nodded, and Rydia guessed that he might be blushing behind his helmet.

_He's in looooove with her! _Rydia thought.

"Very well. I shall take you to the Antlion cave to help you get the Sand Ruby. We can take my hoover craft to cross the shoals," Edward said, rising to his feet.

"Thank you, your majesty," Cecil said, sounding very relieved.

"Please, call me Edward, like everyone else," the prince insisted, leading the way from the room.

As the three companions filed out of the room, Rydia looked back over her shoulder at Edward, who had paused in the doorway to say goodbye to Anna one last time.

_Somewhere in all this mess, we've made a new friend. And now we can get the Sand Ruby, _Rydia thought happily.

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"Rosa!"

Rydia heard Cecil scream Rosa's name as she ran to the crystal room of Fabul castle. Somehow, she and Rosa had been separated trying to get there and she had no idea what was going on.

She was about ten yards away from the door, and whatever was happening didn't sound pleasant.

She almost ran through the door, but she stopped short and peered in cautiously instead. Cecil, Yang and Edward were all KOed on the ground, and a strange man in black armor with a black and gold helmet stood in the middle of the room. And, to Rydia's utter horror, he held Rosa closely against his body with a knife pressed to her throat.

"Let's go, Kain," the black man ordered in a gruff voice and walked to the door, taking Rosa along with him.

_What's going on here? And why does that name sound so familiar? Kain... Kain... Um...?_

She didn't have to wonder long: a man in dragoon armor came to join the black man and followed him out of the room.

It was the same man she'd seen with Cecil in Mist.

_So _that's_ Kain, _Rydia thought, feeling a deep hatred for this man. It was a hatred that she'd once reserved only for Cecil in the hours after the destruction of Mist, before he'd become her protector. Now that hatred was reserved only for Kain, whom she hated most of all.

Fortunately, neither Kain nor the black man noticed her when she pressed herself against the wall next to the door. Rosa seemed to see her, though.

"Save them," she whispered, her voice only heard by Rydia through the last sounds of battle around them and the black man's orders to Kain to get a transport ready.

When they were out of sight, Rydia ducked into the room. She gasped when she saw just how hard her friends had been hit: Yang and Edward had a lot of bruises and a few broken bones. But Cecil had taken the worst of it all. If Rydia had to decide, she'd have said that he'd been beaten half to death. By whom, she didn't know; though she had her money on Kain.

_This is just too horrible,_she thought, tears stinging her eyes. She stood in the middle of the room and cast her heal spell on all of her friends. Yang and Edward mended quickly, but Cecil seemed to barely respond. They all ran to him and helped him up. To Rydia's sdaness, the knight was crying. She wished he still wore his helmet so she wouldn't have to bear the sight of her dear friend crying, but the helmet had been knocked to the other side of the room, dented in several places.

"Let's get him to the inn, quickly," Yang suggested.

Rydia gave Cecil another heal spell, just in case, and followed the monk to the inn.

_Oh please, let him be alright. We need to save Rosa... Again._

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"Edward!"

Rydia prayed that Edward would respond to her cry for help, but he didn't seem to. She was toppling off the side off the deck and into the water below, and she couldn't swim. If she fell in, she would drown! Why wasn't Edward coming to help her?

She hit the rail and flipped over it, catching the railing and dangling from it. She looked all over the deck for him and saw him clinging to the opposite railing for his life. It was still unsure whether he heard her yelling his name.

"Edward, please! Help me!" Rydia screamed, hoping that he would at least look her way.

He did see her, hanging over the side of the ship, but seemed too scared to move.

_You coward! Do something!_ she thought furiously. Once again, Edward's cowardice would cost him a cherished one. She decided to stop yelling for Edward and call for someone else.

"Cecil! Yang! Where are you! Help me, please!" she hollered, trying to pull herself back on deck and failing. Her palms were sweaty and losing their grip on the railing. If help didn't come soon.

"Rydia!" someone yelled. "We're coming! Just hang a little longer!" It sounded like Cecil's voice; he was coming to help her! He had heard her after all!

Her hope renewed, Rydia strengthened her grip on the railing, determined not to fall. But the ship was rocked once more by a large wave and the force flung her from the railing and into the water.

Even though she screamed all the way down, she could plainly hear someone on deck yell her name. Whatever happened on deck after that she didn't hear because she hit the water and was once again surrounded by an element that was deadly to her. She was sinking every moment, losing precious air, and she was surely going to die.

Something fell into the water near above her and she looked up to see what it was:

It was Yang. Her was swimming after her, to save her.

_Thank goodness for friends!_

As Yang caught up to her and took hold of her wrist, she noticed a big blue snake-like monster in the water, nearly twice as long as the ship. She made a noise and pointed at it. Yang saw it too and dragged Rydia back to the surface as fast as he could.

Once they were above water again, Rydia took a big breath of air and sputtered, "Yang, what _is_ that thing?"

"It's Leviathan," the monk answered grimly.

Rydia had heard of Leviathan from her mother once. What did his appearance mean?

Something brushed her leg and she yelped.

"Rydia, what's wrong?" Yang asked.

"Something touched me! There's something down there!"

Before she could say more she was sucked down, out of Yang's hold, and under the water again. The next thing she knew, she was inside a dark, wet cave. All around her were sharp rocks, gleaming like metal. The place smelled like rotting fish, and the floor she was sitting on was squishy and slimy.

She was in a giant mouth.

_No! This can't be happening! _Rydia thought, scared silly.

_I want Cecil and Rosa with me._

_I want my mama._

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"Leviathan? Asura?"

"Yes, it is time, indeed," Asura answered in her rich, milky voice. "You are now a fully fledged summoner, ready to save the world. Are you not excited?"

"You've been awaiting this day for ten years," Leviathan pointed out.

"But..." Rydia started, dumbfounded by their previous statement; the statement a lot of kinds can sometimes dread:

"It's time for you to leave."

"Am I really ready for this?" Rydia asked.

"Your friends are down here somewhere," Asura informed. "I sense that they might be in danger. You must go find them and help them."

"We will be here for the helping if you need it. You _are_ a summoner, you know," Leviathan reminded with a wink of his brown eyes.

Rydia didn't feel ready to leave. For all that ten whole years had passed where she had been, and that she was 17 years old now, she still felt like a child of seven, standing here at the edge of a lava ocean.

"Promise that you won't abandon me," Rydia said, need the reassurance.

"Of course we won't, dearest," Leviathan promised.

"Now go on and find an adventure," Asura urged. "You'll be just fine, I know it."

_I'm glad that at least one of us thinks so, _Rydia thought.

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"Yang!"

The monk ignored Rydia's plea as he walked to the control room door.

"Just leave this to me. Get out as fast as you can," Yang instructed. The walked through the door and shut it. Rydia ran at the door and tried to pull it open, but Yang had locked it.

"No! You can't do this!" Rydia screamed, but her friend didn't hear her.

"Come on, Rydia, we have to go," Cecil ordered, but Rydia wouldn't budge.

"Sorry about this, then" the paladin said sadly and took Rydia by the arm. She put up resistance and Kain came to help.

That was the one thing that she couldn't stand to think about: this traitor, whom she still hated intensely, helping to drag her away from a friend who needed her.

"Let me go, let me go! We have to help him!" Rydia yelled, trying to free herself from her companions.

"We _can't_ help him," Cecil pointed out fiercely. "Tell me what it was you planned to do to help him."

Rydia was silent.

"He can handle it. Do as he says and leave with us, or you will die too," Rosa added.

_I can't believe that I'm doing this. I can't believe that I find my friends again only to lose one of them and I can't help! _Rydia thought despairingly as they approached a bridge.

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"Cid?"

"You lot heard me," the engineer said. Keep flying towards Baron. I'ma gonna take out those guns down there with this here bomb," he explained, holding up a contraption made solely from TNT.

"But you'll kill yourself!" Rosa protested.

"Cid, there must be another way," Rydia insisted, still shaken by Yang's sacrifice not 15 minutes ago.

"Hey!" Cid shouted at the summoner. "That's _uncle_ Cid to you, kid!"

"But she's right," Cecil said from the helm. "Can't you--"

"No I can't," Cid answered, heading for the rail. "Oh, and when you get back, tell my boys to fix up the _Enterprise_ the way I showed them, 'kay?"

"Cid!" everyone yelled together as Cid prepared to hop the rail.

"Tallyho!" Cid shouted cheerily as he fell over the side.

"No!" Rydia shouted, running to the rail.

"Haha! Now _this_ is what I call going out with a bang!" Cid called back to her, lighting the bomb.

_No... Not again... Please..._

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"Kain!"

The dragoon paid no attention to Rosa's cry of shock and horror as he ran out of the cave, the dark, shiny crystal clutched in his hand.

"You two-timing cur, you!" Edge, the ninja hollered after him.

"Kain, come back please!" Cecil yelled.

_Why? Why does he always do this to us? _Rydia thought angrily, feeling her hatred for Kain bubble anew.

_I almost dared to think I could let my guard down too._

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"..._Cecil?_"

"I'm truly sorry, my very dear friend," Cecil apologized, "but you've hurt yourself very badly during our trip through the giant. I'm afraid that you're just not well enough to come with us this time."

"But... But I _have _to come! You need me! You can't--"

"Yes, I can," Cecil corrected.

Rydia's eyes filled with tears. She tried to stand up, but fell back down when the tremendous pain in her side became too great.

"Don't leave me alone here, _please_," she begged. "I thought you were going to protect me."

The paladin kneeled down beside her and took her hands in his own.

"I _am_ protecting you. You can't go in this condition; and I probably wouldn't let you go if you were alright. You need your rest."

Rydia's tears finally started to fall. She leaned her head against Cecil's shoulder, receiving a tight hug.

"I don't want to have to wonder about you anymore. I did enough of that in the Land of Summons. I'm tired of having to wonder whether you're alright or not. I don't want to have to worry anymore."

She felt like a little girl again. Once again she was being abandoned by her loved ones and didn't know if she would ever see them again.

"Come back, please."

"Of course I'll come back," Cecil assured her, though she knew he probably doubted his own words.

_I hope you do too. I love you._

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A/N So, basically, every abandon-er has been covered.

I was going to add some more, but it was going on and on so I erased it all. It didn't really belong in this piece anyways. The last part was inspired by my brother, who decided to leave Rydia out of his party for the final battle. And I believe that's all I have to say.

Well, I've poured a good bit of my day into this fic, so I'm gonna kick back and watch the rest of One Piece with my brother.


End file.
